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A transactive memory encompasses two key components:
- the stocks of knowledge possessed by your teammates
- awareness of who knows what in a team
Benefits of transactive memory:
- Better search and acquisition of information
- Tacit coordination & eliminating coordination losses
- Less likely to fall into common information trap
- Teams perform better on tasks that require memory and information retrieval
Source: Moreland et al. (1998), Gruenfeld et al. (1996), Thompson (2000)
Developing transactive memory
- Transactive memory eases the repetition of a task
- Transactive memory reduces the number of errors
Source:Liang et al. (1995)
Training in the same team produces by far superior performance than any other training appproaches. Source:Moreland et al. (1996)
So to develop transactive memory
- Training in work teams
- Training focused on the task to be done
- Especially relevant for execution-focused teams